David Simon among witnesses tomorrow at Senate's "future of journalism" hearing

Sen. John Kerry is holding his "The Future of Journalism" Congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Witnesses will be:
Steve Coll, former managing editor of the Washington Post
Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post
James Moroney, CEO of the Dallas Morning News
Marissa Mayer, VP of Google
Alberto Ibarguen, President of The Knight Foundation and former publisher of the Miami Herald
David Simon, former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, who went on to create such TV series as HBO's "The Wire."

Interesting that Google and Huffington will be there. Despite his high profile, I don't know that Simon is going to add too much. He seems to huff and puff an awful lot, but he hasn't worked in a newsroom in more than a decade.

Hopefully the Google rep (and Huffington) will speak to the aggregator vs. originator debate. I've yet to see anyone honestly grilled about why these people aren't footing some kind of AP-like bill for the content they use.

Simon definitely has opinions on the fall of the newspaper industry (and well-informed ones, I think), but I don't think they're that much different than any other bought-out former beat writer from a major metro. Which, perhaps, is a good reason to have him there. If nothing else, he'll scree about the ownership structure, which is a large part of what's excelerated the decline of the industry (I honestly think most individual newspapers could find ways through the death of classified ads if they weren't saddled with debt from a thousand miles away).

Put me in front of a Congressional or Senate hearing and it would be hard not to blurt out "Shame on YOU, Senator!" or "How dare you question me!" or at least one "I'm out of order? This whole hearing is out of order! This whole country is out of order!"
It might be totally random and out of the blue, but it would be fun just to see the reaction.